As September comes to a close, it’s a good time to point out that Wikipedia has an option to view the Top 100 viewed pages of every month.
In September 2006, sex-related pages (List of Sexual Positions, Sex,
Pornography) compete with popular media stories (Steve “Crocodile
Hunter” Irwin, Dawson College Shootings) and more general topics
(Canada, Brazil) for the top spot.
As for Classmate of the Day, yesterday goes to Iona Henderson who brought some smoked salmon her dad had sent her to our Thursday night class. Today, it goes to Linda Bussiere, Quinn Dupont (and Robin and Rory) Mike McNally, and Christina Winter who all joined Shea and I at the Grad Club for what felt like old times in so many ways (except for a lot more talk about cloth v. Pamper diapers and the advantages of breastfeeding than I'd ever heard with MLIS'ers at the Grad Club before.)
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Friday, September 29
Friday Fun Link - Wikipedia 100 (Sept 29, 2006)
by
Jason
on Fri 29 Sep 2006 08:40 PM EDT
Saturday, September 23
Are You A FIS Blogger?
by
Jason
on Sat 23 Sep 2006 01:25 PM EDT
Are you a blogger? Do you have things to say
about the profession (archives, museums, lis, etc . . . )? We're
looking to compile a directory of active FIS bloggers, so why not send
your details along and be included! OPML-based 'reading lists' will
eventually be created so that members of the FIS community (and
beyond!) can subscribe to a 'block' of blog feeds based on areas of
interest. For this reason, please be a specific as you can about your
blog's primary area(s) of focus. Here's what we need: * Blog name * Your name * Topic/area of interest Thanks! Sherri  Sherri Vokey: Digital Services Librarian - Faculty of Information Studies - University of Torontocontact | sherri.vokey@utoronto.ca - 416-978-5768 | aim/iChat - sherrivokey [at] mac.com This is a sort of timely e-mail to receive (thanks Gord!) as I just stumbled across the blog for 757 - Social Software & Libraries. One of that classes' first assignments was to create a blog and the instructor has linked to all of the blogs from the course page to encourage the students to realise that they're part of the blogosphere (which is cool.) But clicking through and reading some of them, I think she may have made the same mistake that many people teaching these types of courses do - namely, defining what the students must post rather than encouraging them to post whatever they want. If all that students post are assigned responses to readings and other coursework, blogging is going to feel like homework and nobody is going to continue doing it after the class is done (which should be at least part of the goal of a course like this.) Not to mention that instead of having original, readable blogs, you have this homogenous mass of blogs that are all talking about the same thing which sort of defeats the purpose as far as I'm concerned. I look at the list of people in the class and see people with interests in esoteric philosophy, medieval history, Russian culture not to mention those with knowledge of specialized areas of librarianship (one whose mother is a medical librarian and would likely have lots of insight into the profession, many who've been on co-op and could share their experiences on that, etc.) I'm sure the instruction didn't restrict them to only writing about their coursework but if that's what is assigned, that's likely all a person will have the time to do. I think a much better solution would be to tell the students to come up with an original theme for their blog (it could be specific, it could be as general as "what's happening in my life") and make that the subject of their weekly post (along with the occasional response to the readings/posting of coursework to achieve the learning goal of making them think about the role of/problems with social software.) How's that for a mini-rant?  Classmate of the Day: Barb very generously offered me a ride to Word on the Street in Kitchener-Waterloo tomorrow. I'd been planning to attend in Toronto all year since I used to be a board member of WotS Calgary and wanted to see what the "big guys" did. (In fact, my ambitious plan was to organize a rental van or even a bus trip to take intereste students. If it was first semester, I might've pulled it off but as I mentioned, third-semester Jason is stretched too thin as it is!) But pending assignments, the expense to go to TO for a single day and a few other things all factored into making me decide not to go. Still, I was glad to have the offer of a ride to the much closer festival with a local and am looking forward to seeing the KW version. Kathy Stinson is reading, there's a celebrity spelling bee and a handwriting analysis tent plus there's even a panel on blogging that I should probably go take in so I know what I'm talking about when I go on my mini-rants! 
Friday, September 22
All Kinds of Thoughts & Things - None of Which Are My Homework
by
Jason
on Fri 22 Sep 2006 11:42 PM EDT
Scholarly Journal Submission Update
Just finished submitting the revised version of "Useless as Tits on a Bull: User Fees in Alberta Public Libraries" to Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Research and Theory. As I said before, it's been an extremely educational process, I got some great feedback and even if they don't decide to publish it after this time around, I'm happy that my paper is 100% better than it was before. (I doubt I'd revise it again it it comes back to me once more - at least while I'm still in school this semester. It's been far too distracting as is.) With that said, I would encourage anyone to submit your best essay to them. Even if it doesn't get published, it's well worth going through the process. I've asked for permission to reprint the two peer reviewers' comments and I'll likely also upload the revised paper at some point in the future as well. The In-Box Exercise A popular job interview technique is the "in-box" exercise where you're given a hypothetical in-box full of memos, letters, reports, etc. and asked to prioritize everything, explaining your decisions. That's what my first three weeks of library school have been like with an in-box filled with: 1) revising that essay for resubmission to the journal 2) student council stuff - both my required duties and a bunch of new initiatives we discussed at the last meeting 3) finalizing arrangements for the most ambitious Lunch Bucket Speaker event I've presented by far 4) trying to keep up with readings and assignments. In what might be marked as a "fail" in the real-world in-box exercise, the order I listed those things is also basically the prioritiy I've given them (you could probably also stick "write long, rambling blog entries" in at 3.5 before doing homework too!) I've been amazingly lucky to not have a single assignment due until September 26 (how is that even possible in this program?) but the readings have been pretty heavy so far so that's time consuming as is. My priorities will definitely re-arrange in the coming weeks...or else I'm in trouble. A gazillion years ago, my boss told me that the danger of working in non-profit organizations wasn't that the work was too easy, it was that it was too easy to let yourself get stretched thin. She said the kind of people attracted to non-profit work tend to be the kind of people who can't say 'no' and get in trouble because of it. (Er, do you see anyone around here who fits that description?) Groccery Checkout Gotta give a big plug to Grocery Checkout, a locally-owned company that's about to celebrate their one year anniversary in November. Shea and I have used them a few times this year to order and deliver groceries to us. Their prices are comparable to most grocery stores, they save you the time and hassle of shopping as well as the expense of getting to the store (especially if you don't have a car and have to take a cab or don't want to always be doing "mini-runs" on the bus.) They don't offer as many "specials" as grocery stores do but you're also less likely to do all those impulse buys. They used to charge a flat fee of $7.95 but recently revised their pricing so that the basic fee is $6.95, if you order over $100, it's $4.95 and if you order over $150, it's only $1.50! Great for ordering heavy canned goods, great for getting frozen goods home in summer without them melting on the bus, great if you have a household with two or more people and can order $150+ in groceries at a time. Their delivery schedules vary depending on how busy they are but we put in our latest order last night and had our groceries by 7pm tonight. Give them a try if you get a chance! Classmate of the Day Catch-up Did I ever explain this for any new readers? In addition to the Friday Fun Links, another recurring feature on this blog is "Classmate/Colleague of the Day" where I name somebody around FIMS who's done something cool or memorable or fun or somehow made my life more enjoyable (ie. basically, any reason I want.) So yeah, let's see if I can shotgun a few COTD's for the last week to "catch-up"... Monday - I didn't get the name but the guy at the Registrar who gave me a form with the University's seal confirming my enrollment without charging me $5 like the woman at the front desk wanted to is my first CotD not connected to the program I think. Tuesday - Karina Miki-Douglas did an awesome presentation in our 532 - Journalism class with a display, props, handouts AND free Runts candies. You could tell she took Instructional Strategies with Jennifer Noon! (She also won a contest and its her photo of the clock tower that's on the front of the SOGS dayplanner. Tres cool!) Wednesday - everybody on Student Council. We've got a lot of exciting ideas for new projects this term and if we even manage to implement half of them, it would be amazing. Thursday - Corey Redekop, who is a recent FIMS grad with a novel coming out next year gave me the honour of seeing previews of the four covers under consideration for it. (Him and I disagreed about which was the best though!) Friday - I spent an enjoyable few hours at the Grad Club this afternoon with two PhD students, Tami Oliphant and Margaret Kipp, discussing all manner of things from blogs to intellectual freedom to social bookmarking technology to the publishing industry (Tami is teaching a course on Publishing in Winter 2007 and everybody should take it - it's going to be awesome!) Tuesday, September 5
Randomness (Happy Labour Day aka "What I Learned On My Summer Vacation")
by
Jason
on Tue 05 Sep 2006 11:19 PM EDT
Another recurring feature on this blog is that I've done a few "random thoughts" posts connected to various holidays over the past few months. I didn't do one on Monday so here's a belated Happy Labour Day to you and some good old fashioned randomness...
What I Learned On My Summer Vacation Short of a trip to Woolworth's to buy a Star Wars lunch bucket, this return to school felt more like a "real" return to school than either of my last semesters. Knowing that many high schools were returning to their classrooms today and seeing all of the fresh-faced undergrads running around campus added to this feeling. What I Learned About Fresh-Faced Undergrads They're not exactly fresh-faced. More like "purple-faced". Christina, who has a co-op on campus so has been over there during the break warned me, "It's like being on an American campus - all these kids in matching t-shirts and painted faces marching and chanting." (A few of us were standing around today at NCB talking about this and we decided that one commonality between all library students is our lack of enthusiam for such activities.) Unfortunately, I have not one but two classes up by the UCC this semester so I'm going to have to wade through the undergrads on a much more regular basis than when I can cocoon in the NCB. What I Learned About Student Council Had our first meeting today and I think we've got an awesome group of people. Hopefully we can get lots of exciting work done over the next semester that will help not only current students but those who may come later. What I Learned About Car Rentals We've rented a few cars through the year and have had a different model everytime. Our latest was the Ford Fusion which Shea and I both completely fell in love with, so much as to the point that this could very likely be the next type of car we buy when we're in the market for one in a year or two. What I Learned About London Public Library It's easily one of my least favourite libraries I've used in my entire life. There's many reasons for this that I won't get into now (note to self: future list alert!) but I'm hoping I get to explore this further in my public libraries class somehow. (For instance, I'd like to do a paper on "The Perfect Public Library" this semester if I can fit it in. Any comments on what makes a great public library for you would be appreciated!) (Oh, and if I end up applying for a job there in four months, these comments are of course null and void and I *love* LPL! )Okay, that's about it. I also had one other recurring feature in this blog where I'd often name a "Classmate/Colleague of the Day", a highly coveted award (?) given to acknowledge classmates who helped me out or made me laugh or did something cool or basically anything else that catches my attention. I haven't given it out for awhile because the only classmate I had contact with over the break was myself (er, that sounds dirtier than I meant it to) but I'll bring it back now. Classmate of the Day is Lindsay Holdsworth who did a kick-ass job chairing her first Student Council meeting. Sometimes I think about how fun it would be to have all of my favourite classmates end up at the same library working in our favourite areas (I'd be in charge of collections development) and Lindsay is one of those people that I'd love to work with. |
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